From EP 2 712 815 A1, a packaging facility is known that comprises a tray sealing machine, a tappet feeder and a dispensing unit that is also called denester. The denester drops individual trays onto the tappet feeder. The tappet feeder, in turn, has a circulating, motor-driven chain drive with a plurality of tappets, wherein each tray is pushed by respectively one tappet from the denester to the tray-sealing machine.
Multiple solutions are conceivable to avoid any shearing and squeezing risk during manual access by an operating person. A variant consists of a mechanical housing of the denester or a curtain of light around the denester in order to avoid access during running operation, especially of the tappet feeder. A further conceivable variant is an embodiment of the denester in which a vertical minimum distance of 100 mm is provided between the upper edge of the tappet of the tappet feeder and the lower edge of the dispensing screws of the denester. Due to the high safety distance, there is no shearing or squeezing risk even when no housing exists. This is disadvantageous because the trays are thrown down and/or dropped from this altitude of approximately 120 mm. The lower the height of the tray, the more critical is this altitude and the process safety is compromised because the rotary orientation of the empty tray can be changed after said empty tray hits the tappet feeder or because the tray can come to rest not within but on a lateral guiding. Likewise, it might occur that the empty tray gets caught with its tray edge on the tappet itself due to the impact. Such situations can lead to problems in a successive automated filling process, just as during handover of the trays from the tappet feeder to the tray-sealing machine.